blood sweat tear

[imeanforever]

He's moving her to a different court to see if it'll improve her attitude. She's allowed to fly. It's been a long, long time since she was allowed to -

She is only allowed to fly to her destination, not anywhere else. She notices that she is not where she should be, that she cannot progress to where she was told to go, and she careens out of control when her wings won't flap anymore, and she crashes.

---

with Miles (kappa)

with Minus (kappa)

Comments

[thisvorlunatic]

"...I need to spend a minute thinking this through, actually," he says, and sits down at the desk.

[imeanforever]

Promise makes more harmonic maps of other locations, meanwhile, confirming that they are Yep, Super Flat.

[thisvorlunatic]

It takes him a few minutes, and it goes like this:

If there's a magical immortal fairy from another world in his living room with the ability to command anyone whose name she knows, he has to tell Illyan. The security implications are staggering. It only takes one syllable. 'Vor' is a syllable. She could conquer the planet. She probably couldn't keep the planet, but she could conquer it.

Illyan is going to think of this situation in terms of threat (huge) and advantage (also huge). He doesn't normally make policy decisions solo, but on something like this... he might end up giving Miles an order which Miles would have to desert the Imperial Service over.

And just why would you desert the Imperial Service over this, Silver?

...Because she is his vassal. Actually, if she hadn't used that word it probably would have taken him a lot longer to figure out why he feels this sense of responsibility toward her. She didn't sign up to be a Barrayaran resource. She was in a bad situation and she did what she had to to get out of it, and now here he is with his very own irrevocably magically commanded fairy and his Barrayaran soul looks at this and says, I pledge you the protection of a liege lord.

If she becomes the richest person in the galaxy by selling impossible dimensional doors, Illyan's going to notice, and if Miles has been orchestrating it under his nose, Miles will be in the deepest of shit.

She's going to need an intermediary if she wants to deal with the number of humans she'd have to interact with to sell a gate network, because even if she doesn't have ethical qualms about learning a million names, Miles does, and ethical qualms aside, if the wrong person gets an inkling that they are under her irrevocable magical command they could end up putting her immortality to the test. Among other potential unpleasant reactions.

If he went to Gregor rather than Illyan... well, Gregor would like to buy an impossible dimensional door or two, Miles is sure. And Gregor would not like to put Miles in a position of conflicted loyalties. Gregor of all people should understand. Illyan might complain, but Gregor can shut him up.

Okay. So he has to figure out some way to explain all this to her, and then he can ask her how she would like to proceed.

(Except - to what degree should he even be trusting her? This is all so far outside his experience... his gut says she's not trying to fool him, the explanations she's been giving have all fit the observable facts, but should he be trying to verify? How? He's not sure there can exist a way to verify the orders thing that is simultaneously ethical and effective.)

Well, for now he hasn't really done anything that would be nonstrategic if this were all an elaborate hoax. But he should think of a better verification for at least the sorcery part if he's going to go to Gregor over this.

He breaks out of his thoughts and looks around for Promise.

[imeanforever]

She is in the hallway, looking pleased at a harmonic map.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Still flat? What does 'flat' even mean in this context?"

[imeanforever]

"Harmonics are an invisible feature of places," Promise says. "They vary, usually continuously but not always and at various rates. Sort of like... ground level. Except in three dimensions. They're one of the things that matters for sorcery, and when they are all the same it's a lot easier to take them into account. I don't know why mortals wouldn't already have sorcery if it's flat everywhere. Maybe it's only flat some places."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Or maybe sorcery can only be done by a fairy, or in the presence of a fairy, or only learned likewise, or maybe there's some less guessable connection to the very weird fact that fairies have all heard of a mortal world where they think sorcery doesn't work but this mortal world, where sorcery does work, has only heard of fairies as fictional beings with some of their most relevant properties omitted. It's fascinating and I'm fascinated but before I get too far into that, I want to talk to you about your immediate plans. How much interest do you have in becoming unspeakably rich via the sale of interstellar portals?"

[imeanforever]

"I... kind of want to spend at least a month living an extremely boring life in my own tree putting my psyche back together. But after that it sounds more interesting than most things I might be doing in Fairyland."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yeah, that's fair," he agrees. "In which case I guess the first problem to be solved is getting you a cutting of that tree?"

[imeanforever]

"Yeah. The problem with gates is that they can take any amount of time to settle. Days, sometimes. And they start open. If I make one, and it settles while I'm asleep, there will just be an open Fairyland gate to right where he'd be looking for me if he looked."

[thisvorlunatic]

"...That's... potentially solvable," he says thoughtfully. "And, um. I feel like I owe you an explanation of why I'm so interested in solving your problems - I mean, I'm sure you've guessed that I'm very excited about potentially learning sorcery, and it may be apparent that I'm of a problem-solving nature in general, but there's cultural context on top of that."

[imeanforever]

"Mm?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"It's... I might make a mess of this, I apologize, I'm using up a lot of brainpower on name-related censoring and trying to avoid saying things that might be orders, but - the word 'vassal', on this planet, refers to a cultural phenomenon with no magical enforcement whatsoever. And under that system, having a vassal comes with responsibilities. I take those responsibilities very seriously. You're obviously coming from a vastly different context, but as far as I'm concerned, for as long as you are magically required to obey my commands I have a personal duty to see to your safety and comfort."

[imeanforever]

"You probably aren't going to accidentally give me enforced commands," Promise says.

[thisvorlunatic]

"I know, but I'm being paranoid about it anyway because my level of discomfort with this entire system is extremely high."

[imeanforever]

"Oh." Pause. "What was your idea about the gate problem?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Oh. Set up the gate in an uninhabited location that would be prohibitively difficult to leave unassisted, and monitor it remotely in case anybody comes through. Then if we get any unexpected visitors they're alone on a deserted moon with no idea where you are. And you can check it at your leisure with your handy access to mortal technology. It'd be a little expensive to do it that way, but if you verify that the interplanetary portals are possible and express an interest in making some eventually, I, um, happen to be childhood friends with the emperor of this planet and could probably get him to front some extravagant aid if it means you start with us when you do get around to selling portals."

[imeanforever]

"Difficult to leave how...?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"I guess I should check my assumptions. How high can fairies fly, and what if anything stops them from going higher?"

[imeanforever]

"If we go up too far the air gets too thin for wingbeats to do anything. I'm not sure if anything would stop the ones who can teleport. I guess they might pass out eventually."

[thisvorlunatic]

"...There's ones who can teleport?"

[imeanforever]

"Crystalswifts. They don't go very far, but they could probably outpace falling speed if they tried."

[thisvorlunatic]

"That sounds like a deeply inefficient method of space travel," he says. "If there aren't any precise long-distance teleporters, sticking the gate on a moon will almost certainly work just fine. Space is big."

[imeanforever]

"It must be, if those pictures you showed me were to scale."

[thisvorlunatic]

"The solar system one actually shrank the distances between planets by a lot, proportional to their size," he says. "Because when the scales are accurate it can be difficult to have more than one planet in view at a time, even in the same system, the littler ones would be the size of dust motes before you could fit them all in a display area together. Space is big."